


the icarus to your certainty

by biggod



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blood and Violence, Canon Divergence, Discorporation (Good Omens), Hurt Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Other, Presumed Dead, Title from a Hozier Song
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 05:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20501480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggod/pseuds/biggod
Summary: “You know, angel,” he started, too casually, “you can stay at my place, if you like.”“There’s a dead body in your doorway, Crowley, and it used to be yours.”-or-The one where Crowley discorporates instead of Aziraphale, the apocalypse still doesn't happen, and an angel has to deal with his shit eventually.





	the icarus to your certainty

**Author's Note:**

> i got an idea, which turned into a text post, which didn't leave me alone, and then morphed into this.
> 
> i have quite a bit written for these two, but this is my first published piece. i'm just jumping back into writing anything plot-based, as i've spent the last four years writing exclusively poetry, so please forgive me as i work out the kinks. you can see me slipping in and out of prose poetry at several points, it's a hard habit to shake. i'm too tired to edit into oblivion, so maybe it works? i welcome constructive criticism!
> 
> additionally. i wrote this instead of sleeping when my pain was at a 7, then edited the next day on half an hour's nap. be kind!
> 
> find me on tumblr as disabledcrowley.

_ I won’t even think about you. _

His own words cycled mockingly in his mind, and he gritted his teeth as he took the stairs three at a time up to his flat. He’d thrown them out carelessly, lashing out in his frustration, as though he’d done anything  _ but _ think of Aziraphale for centuries. It was a mess he’d have to sort out later. He shifted his thoughts to the safe in his office, running the combination over his tongue soundlessly; it had been at least 40 years since he’d opened it last.

His front door opened with a wave. He could chart a straight path through it, past the kitchen and the atrium, back to the office, behind the Da Vinci--

Flint-sharp obsidian dug into his throat, slicing cleanly from left to right, digging all the way back to his cervical vertebrae. Hastur reached for his glasses, slipping them from Crowley’s face with a smug grimace. They clattered on the floor, crunching beneath a moldy boot, no longer concealing Crowley’s wide, startled gaze.

“Ngk,” he said cleverly. And, well, you never realize how uncomfortable a cement floor is until you’ve toppled quite gracelessly onto it, do you?

“No hard feelings, Crowley,” Hastur grinned, leering over him. Ligur joined from his other side. "Just need you out of the way until the war begins."

“Actually, quite a few hard feelings,” Ligur added, laughs more like gasps, and even as he bled out, world going dark, Crowley suppressed the urge to roll his eyes.

“Your angel friend is in for a surprise,” Hastur added, now an echo in distant ears, but Crowley caught it, just barely.

_ Now, that will not do. _

He held onto consciousness long enough to imagine very hard what would happen if, upon his imminent discorporation, his soul did not return to Hell, but instead went somewhere entirely else.

***

“Hastur.” Ligur kicked Crowley’s hip to be sure the body was good and dead. “We still have that holy blade?”

“Yeah,” he replied, tilting his head. “Need the gloves to use it, but yeah.”

“What do you say we really give the angel a fright?”

When Hastur grinned, it was all teeth.

***

“I know where the Antichrist is,” he blurted after the beep. “I worked it all out.”

That scratching noise at the door was really getting a bit concerning, and usually Crowley would’ve picked up by now;  _ bugger _ .

“Call me at once.”

He hung up, crossing to the front door, cracking it enough to peek. Mr. Shadwell’s wide eyes met his, and he stumbled back, nearly into the street.

“Demon!”

“I beg your pardon?” Aziraphale widened the gap in the door, affronted.

“Seducin’ women to do yer evil will!”

He staggered closer, wagging a lockpick in the angel’s face, angling as though to push past him into the shop. Aziraphale blocked him, shut the door behind him, waved the lock into place.

“Oh, I think perhaps you’ve got the wrong shop. If you don’t mind, I’ve got urgent business…" - a reluctant snap - "...and it seems you do too.”

Shadwell’s brows rose impossibly high, and he rushed off down the street, exorcism forgotten and a Witchfinder Private to save. When he reached the train station he would find sufficient funds in his bag without any distinct memory of receiving it.

Aziraphale flagged down a cab and gave the driver a Mayfair address.

***

Aziraphale didn’t discover Crowley all at once. It happened in a series of moments, each more tense and horrific than the last. It started as a bad feeling in the cab, tightening in his stomach at the sulphur-scent in the lobby, intensifying threefold when he stepped off the lift - which was out of order, but he hadn’t realized that, distracted as he was - to discover the flat’s door was ajar.

“Crowley?”

His voice wavered more than he would’ve liked as he stepped tentatively towards the door, his eyes drawn to a black shape on the floor just to the right of the jamb. The next revealed that shape to be a snakeskin boot, then two. When his legs finally carried him through, he took in Crowley, limp and bloodied, eyes half-shut, bone visible beneath the gash in his throat, and he dropped to his knees before he could take another step.

“I…” He couldn’t speak another word, his own airway locked in a vise, vision blurry as he reached a hand to the demon’s chest. He gasped, pressing his palm over where a heart should be. Stab wounds littered his torso; a strangled sob clawed its way out of him as he felt holy residue inside them.

He sat back on his ankles, heel of his palm digging harshly into his eye socket, trying desperately to ground himself somehow. He wanted to pray, to ask his Mother to intervene--

_ The point is not to avoid the war, the point is to win it. _ She didn’t care. Crowley had been right. There were no right people.

He had been right about everything. Heaven was no more righteous than the Crusades they’d endorsed, the genocides they’d tolerated, the world they’d planned to end, the children they’d drowned along the way. Crowley had always been so patient, waiting for him to accept it on his own terms, until the very last moment when he had run out of time.

_ The forces of Hell have figured out that it was my fault. But we can run away together. _

_ Yes, _ he longed to say, had always longed to say.  _ Yes, I love you, yes. _

Instead,  _ Crowley, you’re being ridiculous. _

His tongue became a leaden thing, heavy with the weight of the rebuke. He hadn’t seen the plea for the desperate final act it was, at the time, but then, had he ever been that concerned with listening to Crowley? So caught up in millenia of fake rivalry, a façade held together by lies to superiors and the spouting of the party line, that he took every opportunity to ignore the very sensible argument that Heaven was not as he believed. This was where it had brought him, blood and ichor soaking into his clothes and his skin and his grace, the earth ending in a few hours, his already in ash.

The sobs had become heaving, hysterical, and he reached out, brushing through short red hair. His hand trembled against his cheek, and Crowley's head shifted ever so slightly downwards, a fresh flow of black seeping from his throat wound, exposing a bit more of the bone. He squeezed his eyes shut against the image.

_ You’re so clever. How can somebody as clever as you be so stupid? _

How indeed.

He wanted to scream. He did scream. Then he forced his eyes open, leaned forward and pressed his lips ever so tenderly to Crowley’s forehead.

There was still the matter of the apocalypse. He gathered his aching pieces together and stood, and this time he was the one to walk away.

***

He made it as far as the Bentley, parked on the street outside.

“Better off without him?” There is not a terribly sad way to scoff, and yet that is exactly what Aziraphale did, into a bottle of single-malt scotch, none of which was allowed to slosh onto the seat no matter how wildly he gestured with it. He hiccuped mournfully. “What did h-he know anyway? In six thousand years I don’t think he did one completely evil thing. He was always trying to-- to be better, trying to make  _ me _ better.”

He wasn’t terribly drunk. Or, rather, he was quite sure he had, at some point in history, been  _ more _ drunk than this, and was growing attached to the idea of beating that record. Hadn’t intended upon drinking at all, originally, but the short ride down the lift had been long enough for him to realize that he was not equipped to handle any of this sober.

“Angel?”

Aziraphale whipped to the side so quickly his head spun a bit. Crowley sat in the passenger seat, which wasn’t correct: firstly, because Crowley had owned this car for over ninety years and had never, not once, sat in the passenger seat, and secondly because he wasn’t sitting, not really. He wasn’t as solid as he ought to be, and Aziraphale didn’t know what to make of it, of the shimmer and wave of his image.

“Crowley?” His voice was soft, hesitant. “Are you… real?”

“I’m real. It’s me.” Perhaps he could see the red puffiness of the angel’s eyes, but he was far gentler than Aziraphale felt he deserved.

“I’m afraid I've rather made a mess of things.” He looked down at the bottle, then past it to the blood stains on his slacks. “Did you go off to the stars, my darling?”

Crowley gaped once, twice at the endearment before he inhaled sharply, unnecessary as it was given that he wasn’t actually moving any oxygen.

“No, angel. Just discorporated, that’s all.”

“But,” and Aziraphale’s brow creased at this, and he met Crowley’s eyes, “The holy wounds. I felt them myself.”

“I’m still here. Must’ve been a trick. Aziraphale, I’m sorry.”

What he was sorry for, Aziraphale wasn't sure. It could've been the argument, but he found it more likely that Crowley knew exactly how his appeal to the Almighty had turned out. Once more he felt something raw coil tightly in his chest, and he shook his head, deciding right that moment that he could put this horrible weight aside long enough to save the world.

“My dear, listen. The Antichrist is in Tadfield. The airbase, that’s where it’s all going to happen. We have to find a way there at once."

“I’ll need a body.” Crowley narrowed his eyes. “And you’ll need a ride.”

Before Aziraphale could respond, the Bentley roared to life beneath him. His eyes widened.

“No, Crowley, I don’t even know how to  _ drive _ \--”

“Angel, I can’t possess you. We’ve got to split up.” He softened. “She’ll take care of you. I’ll meet you at the airbase.”

He began to fade, and Aziraphale couldn’t help the panic that rose within, but he breathed in deep and exhaled into sobriety, fingers wrapping hesitantly around the wheel.

“You’re going to have to do most of the work, I’m afraid,” he nearly whispered. He didn’t expect the Bentley to respond.

_ I work hard every day of my life _

_ I work till I ache in my bones _

_ At the end of the day I take home my hard earned pay all on my own _

_ I get down on my knees and I start to pray _

_ The tears run down from my eyes, lord _

_ Somebody, ooh, somebody _

_ Can anybody find me somebody to love? _

***

There was, as it turns out, a woman in a ginger wig performing a rather poor imitation of a seance who did contain a touch of a gift. He approached her cautiously, leery of taking control of an unwilling body. She felt the touch of his corrupted grace, saw his intentions, and said,  _ go ahead. _

***

Aziraphale watched the M25 London Orbital Motorway erupt into a wall of infernal fire through the windshield of a car that he’d always been frightened of, but at the moment felt like a friend.

“Oh,  _ fuck _ .”

The Bentley began to croon  _ We Are The Champions _ as she eased off to the shoulder and began to pick up speed. He gripped the wheel until his fingers shook with the effort, terrified, but remembered  _ she’ll take care of you _ , and he knew that she would. Crowley’s willpower was practically fused into the axles, and it was that steadfast belief that held the two of them together as they plunged into the flame and came out the other side.

And because he was a bit of a bastard once it came down to Armageddon, he gave the police car a little wave through the window as they passed by.

***

The thing about those two, Adam decided immediately, was that they didn’t _want_ to kill him. He could feel the hesitation, the guilt and fear coming off of them in waves. They were trying to keep the earth spinning, and he certainly couldn’t blame them for that. So he gave the demon back a body - no one on the airfield missed the angel’s shudder of relief to see him whole again - and when they stopped time and stood by him, he got an inexplicable sense that they were supposed to have been in his life for a long time, and it wouldn’t do for the other angels and demons to try to kill them after this, would it?

So he sent reality a nudge before he faced down a devil that had evidently never heard of child support.

***

The bus was cold and the seat was barely comfortable, and Aziraphale seemed very much like he wanted to touch Crowley, but he didn’t. He had brushed fingers lightly over his cheek on the air strip, watched carefully as though he expected the demon to fall to pieces, and since that moment he hadn’t let Crowley further than an arm’s reach away.

“You know, angel,” he started, too casually, brain turning over the words  _ my darling _ again and again, “you can stay at my place, if you like.”

“There’s a dead body in your doorway, Crowley, and it used to be yours.”

He opened his mouth to respond, but instead exhaled deeply, brows lifting over his glasses as  _ that _ sank in. Next to him, Aziraphale shifted imperceptibly closer.

“However,” his sharp edges were gone, rounded by relief, “there’s room for one more at the shop.”

Their eyes met, and Crowley smiled. He laid his hand on his knee, palm up, an invitation. Aziraphale accepted immediately, squeezing, a silent, emphatic yes.

**Author's Note:**

> there will be a second chapter, wherein aziraphale is forced to sort through some things, and crowley is along for the ride.


End file.
